This is another of those ‘I wonder why?’ situations:
Having spent some time going to school both in Italy and Australia, I’ve noticed some language peculiarities in the english language, which are puzzling, yet virtually everyone takes for granted.
The one I find most annoying goes like this:
As far as countries are concerned, Italians are from Italy, Turks are from Turkey, Chinese are from China, etc.
As far as continents are concerned, Europeans are from Europe, Africans from Africa, etc.
But this all starts to fall apart when you look at America. ‘Americans’ include Bolivians, Mexicans, Canadians, Brazilians, and that peculiar country between Canada and Mexico 
So, logically, if Canadians are from Canada, then who comes from the United States of America?
This is where I love the Italian language. In Italy, they use the word ‘Statunitensi’, which I guess, translates to ‘United Statians’ (or something like that… I’d like to know what is the correct word to describe someone who is from USA)
So its at this point that it gets annoying: if a US ’important person’ make a sweeping statement like ‘we will defend all americans’ or ‘americans will defend timbuktu from terrorists’ then is he also speaking on behalf of the people of Peru, Argentina, etc?
Of course not, but if I was a non-US American, I would take offence at a nation that verbally tries to represent 2 whole continents.
I wonder how this situation came about, since everyone takes it for granted. Some might say ’typical US arrogance’, but its been ongoing for so long that there are probably other reasons (as an Australian, I would believe a certain amount of linguistic laziness is the easiest answer).
Anyway, back to technical talk on the next post!
